JERRY FINK

MANAGING EDITOR

Sam and Linda Johnson moved to Eufaula in 1967 where Sam worked for the U.S. Army Corps of Engi- neers as a hydro elect powerhouse mechanic.

For a time, they lived in a rental home owned by Ernie Hrdlicka, who had closed his grocery store located on the same lot and retired to Longtown where he operated a fishing cabin rental business.

In 1975, the Johnsons bought the house from Hrdlicka in 1975.

Linda thought the vacant grocery store was ideal for a dance studio. She had studied ballet in San Diego where Sam was stationed during his tour in the navy.

“My dream was to have a dance studio,” she said as she watched the old building being taken down on Feb. 4. “In San Diego I was a teacher, ballet mainly. I do an interpretive dance for worship sometime in my church, United Methodist, but I haven’t done that in a long time.”

Sam thought the empty building would make a nice garage where he could work on his old cars, but he agreed to Linda’s dance studio idea.

At one time the building had been a beauty salon before after Hrdlicka closed his store.

Linda ran her dance studio for about five years, charging students $10 for a monthly dance class.

Her students, 60 or 70 kids, ranged in age from three to high school.

A few football players occasionally snuck into the studio to take ballet lessons, which strengthened their legs.

After about five years, Sam evicted Linda from the former store, now dance studio.

“He said ‘You’ve become a hobby, so I’m going to evict you,’” she recalled him joking.

The dance studio became a garage where Sam restored cars and taught teens and women about automobiles all the while working for the Corps of Engineers.

“He liked to stay busy,” Linda said. “He spent a lot of time with teenage boys, teaching them how to take care of their cars. I would come home from church and there would be four or five cars there with their teenaged owners and he was teaching them.

“He taught women how to take care of cars. I was in that class, too. I knew when to drive a car and not, and when toe leave it and call somebody.”

The Johnson’s active world came to an end on April 28, 2009.

They were on their way to Muskogee on U.S. Highway 69.

“A young man had a seizure while driving south, crossed by median by Onapa. His car went airborne and landed on the the front of our car,” Linda recalled.

Sam was killed instantly, but she didn’t know that till later.

The first person on the scene of the accident was an off-duty highway patrol officer, Danny Choate, who just happened along.

Linda had to be cut out of the car. Choate knew the family and was talking to her all the time, reassuring her.

“His voice was familiar,” she said.

When she asked about her husband, Choate knew he was dead and simply told her “he has been transported.”

That simple message gave her some hope.

“I believe to this day that his first talking to me saved me,” she said.

A helicopter happened to be in the area, returning to Tulsa from flight to McAlester.

It arrived at the scene of the accident within minutes and flew her to St. John’s Hospital in Tulsa.

She flatlined for 12 minutes during the flight, she said.

Linda said the trauma team that saved her live was brilliant.

“They never stopped working on me.”

She recalled an outof- body experience in which her husband was leaving but told her “you can’t go with me.”

She was in a coma for 10 days and in the hospital about two months.

After leaving the hospital she had to teach herself to read again, that part of her memory left her.

“I didn’t even know my kids,” she said. “But I knew my husband was gone.”

Following her outof- body experience, she says she’s no longer afraid to die.

Linda was in rehab for over a year.

“They did a good job of getting me back on my feet,” she said.

Her memory appears to be fully restored, and she has lots of memories to fall back on.

But she doesn’t dwell in the past.

She says after her recovery she decided to go on with her life.

Linda watched with some nostalgia as the former dance studiogrocery store-car shop was being torn down.

Soon she will see it replaced with a garage that her husband had hoped to build.